Operation Rescue helped NOW grow

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the two mobilizations in Washington. They did not come pouring into NOW to work for politicians.

Attacks on abortion continue A recent study by the Worldwatch Institute reports that "of the 50 million abortions performed globally each year, nearly half are illegal, and of those at least 200,000perhaps more-women die." Jodi Jacobson, author of the study, was quoted in a UPI report, saying, "Laws and policies that restrict access to abortion don't curb the abortion rate. Instead, they cause women to die."

The National Organization for Women knows well that restrictions on abortion mean deaths. NOW leader and former president, Ellie Smeal, called the June 25 U.S. Supreme Court decision, which upheld state laws requiring pregnant teens to notify parents before getting a legal abortion, the beginnings of a "women's Vietnam."

These laws pose a life and death question because many young women who unintentionally become pregnant find it impossible to tell their parents and thus seek abortions by unsafe means.

Smeal cited statistics to back up NOW's contempt for the Supreme Court's decision against young women's rights to abortion. Forty percent of teenage women and 20 percent of those under 18 get pregnant. Of these, 400,000 opt for abortion, but half will not be able to get parental consent.

"This is 'The Handmaid's Tale.' This is Romania," Smeal told the national conference. She was referring to Margaret Atwood's nightmare novel where state-organized compulsory pregnancy is women's lot in a future misogynous society. Smeal was also referring to the recently deposed Stalinist dictatorship in Romania, where compulsory pregnancies resulted in orphanages filled with abandoned and sick babies and jail terms for women and doctors who violated the anti-abortion laws.

Sheri O'Dell, outgoing NOW Vice 4 SOCIALIST ACTION Roe v. Wade decision. To indicate how medically harmful the Court's decision was, O'Dell reported that every major medical association opposes parental consent laws.

Population issue reappears

Re-elected NOW President Molly Yard called the actions of the Supreme Court "cruel and uncaring" and said that the Supreme Court gave greater rights to fertilized eggs than to young women.

Yard reaffirmed NOW's commitment to reproductive choice, saying, "We would never force anyone to have an abortion." But at the same time, she continued with a theme she began at last year's conference, saying, "We must control population worldwide in order to save the planet."

Yard's linking of abortion rights to population control is a dangerous direction for NOW to take. Population control is the solution posed by those who blame the devastating problems of the environment on the size of the world's population instead of on the capitalist system. Capitalism uses technology and production strictly for the generation of private profit rather than to meet human needs and to protect the earth's ecology.

If the NOW leadership continues to argue along these lines, they will deepen terrible divisions within the women's movement along class and racial lines. Population-control arguments are aimed primarily at the underdeveloped world of non-white peoples, who correctly brand such measures as racist.

Democracy in NOW

The 1990 conference took NOW further down the road to bureaucratizing the organization. In 1989, a hotly debated by-laws change-pushed by the leadership-passed, requiring all candidates for national NOW office to run as part of a slate. This year, with the new rule in effect, there was no opposition to Molly Yard's slate. Not only did they AUGUST 1990 An important workshop at the National Organization for Women's 1990 conference was titled "Project Stand Up for Women: Turning Back 'Operation Bully." This workshop discussed the experience of NOW chapters in fighting back against the illegal abortion clinic blockades of Operation Rescue (OR), the fanatical terrorist group trying to stop abortion through extra-legal means.

Panelists included NOW Executive Vice President Patricia Ireland, Boston NOW President Ellen Convisser, Feminist Majority Director Kathy Spillar, and NOW National Board Member Olga Vives.

The panelists reported that Operation Rescue has stepped back from the frequency of their blockades over the past year and a half in response to the highly effective defense NOW has organized both at the clinics themselves and through the courts.

Injunctions against OR's illegal acts and harassment of women at the clinics, fines levied against their leaders, and jail terms have effectively cut into their ability to mobilize large numbers of anti-abortion lawbreakers.

Patricia Ireland reported that arrests of OR blockaders went from 12,000 in 1988 and 1989 to 400 so far in 1990. These figures show that OR has forsaken its frequent blockades and substituted picket-line harassment of clinic patients. Operation Rescue isn't entirely smashed, however, and the women's movement still needs to be well prepared for the blockades that will occur.

It was reported that the police sometimes helped OR to close clinics by the way in which they handled mass arrests. In many RESCUE!

Clinic attacks backfired on OR.

cases, police cleared all people from the clinic doors-both the illegal blockaders and the pro-choice defenders.

This played into the hands of OR by cutting off access to the clinics while the police took hours to remove the blockaders. Panelists explained that mobilizing great numbers of clinic defenders is what forces the police to do their job.

Socialist Action would appreciate hearing from our readers about clinic defense in your areas.-C.S.